Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Super. Ct. No. LA 057709, Richard H. Kirschner, Judge.
Joseph T. Tavano, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Scott A. Taryle and Beverly K. Falk, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
FLIER, Acting P. J.
Appellant Arturo Lopez Campa pleaded guilty to one count of possessing cocaine for sale and one count of transportation of methamphetamine; he admitted two prior felony convictions. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment on the first count (the term included a three-year enhancement for the prior convictions) and to a concurrent term of three years on the second count. He appeals, raising as the sole issue the legality of his detention prior to his arrest; he contends that he was illegally detained and for this reason his motion to suppress should have been granted. We do not agree and affirm the judgment.
The summary of the facts is based on the transcript of the preliminary hearing and the stipulation that appellant was arrested for giving false information to the police.
Los Angeles Police Officer Stevens was in an unmarked car and in plain clothes when, at approximately 3:30 p.m. on December 28, 2007, he observed appellant seated in the driver’s seat of a parked Ford sedan on the south side of Stagg Street. (It was stipulated that Stevens was an expert on the subject of the illicit possession of cocaine and methamphetamine.) Stevens was in radio contact with Police Detective Wagner and with Officers Mejia and Feher.
Stevens saw a male Hispanic in a green car drive past appellant’s vehicle, slow down and then leave the area. Stevens concluded that the male Hispanic did this to get appellant’s attention. Moments later, appellant drove off.
Stevens followed appellant’s car around the block; Stevens saw the green car parked at the curb. Appellant parked directly in front of the green car. The male Hispanic left his own car, got into appellant’s vehicle for about a minute and returned to his own car. In Stevens’s opinion, this behavior was consistent with the delivery of narcotics. We will refer to this incident as the “first transaction.”
Stevens followed appellant as he drove off. Stevens learned from Detective Wagner that appellant was on Van Nuys Boulevard, and that he had pulled into an alley. Wagner saw a person named Cabral get into appellant’s car on the passenger side. Appellant again drove off. Stevens observed appellant as he drove up and down in residential neighborhoods.
Appellant stopped at a stop sign. It was here that the officers detained both appellant and Cabral.
Appellant told Officer Feher that his name was Raul Rojas and that his date of birth was November 30, 1975. An identification card on the driver’s seat of appellant’s car gave the name Raul Rojas and had appellant’s picture with a different date of birth. It was stipulated that appellant was arrested for giving false information about his date of birth.
As Cabral left appellant’s car, he clenched some money in his hand.
A search of appellant’s vehicle disclosed a wallet with the identification of Arturo Campa and appellant’s photograph. The search also uncovered multiple baggies with a large quantity of cocaine and one bag of methamphetamine. In Stevens’s opinion, the narcotics were possessed for the purpose of sale. The officers also recovered a digital scale from the car and $2,445 from appellant’s person.
DISCUSSION
“A detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the detaining officer can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person detained may be involved in criminal activity.” (People v. Souza (1994) 9 Cal.4th 224, 231.) Law enforcement officers may draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person. (People v. Hernandez (2008) 45 Cal.4th 295, 299.) “A police officer’s expertise can attach criminal import to otherwise innocent facts.” (People v. Limon (1993) 17 Cal.App.4th 524, 532.)
Stevens was asked whether he had an opinion, based on his expertise, about the first transaction. He answered that this transaction was “the call and deliver method of narcotics sales.” Thus, at this point in time, i.e., quite early in the sequence of events, Stevens identified an objective indication that appellant was engaging in criminal activity. It is simply not true, as claimed by appellant, that Stevens “did not see anything that could even be construed as narcotics[] activity.”
Appellant refers to Stevens’s testimony about Cabral at pages 23-24 of the clerk’s transcript (“Well, based on the activity I observed, the meeting, first of all, with Mr. Cabral”); appellant contends that the transaction with Cabral came after the detention and therefore cannot support the decision to detain appellant.
Appellant is mistaken. Stevens was asked whether he had an opinion about whether the narcotics found in appellant’s car were possessed for sale. It was in answer to this question that he referred to the “meeting” with Cabral. Stevens did not base his opinion that the first transaction was an illicit narcotics transaction on his observation of appellant and Cabral. And Cabral got into appellant’s car before, and not after, the detention. Thus, appellant’s suspicious interaction with Cabral occurred before and not after the detention.
Appellant contends that Stevens “merely had a hunch that something was amiss with [appellant]” and that this hunch cannot be used retroactively to justify the detention. Stevens’s opinion that the first transaction was an illicit narcotics transaction was not a hunch but a clearly articulated conclusion that was informed by the officer’s training and experience. (People v. Hernandez, supra, 45 Cal.4th at p. 299.)
Appellant contends that the trial court, in denying the motion to suppress, did not point to any articulable facts to justify the detention. We do not agree. The trial court discussed the first transaction in some detail, noting that an experienced police officer had characterized this transaction as the call and deliver method of narcotics sale.
Stevens’s conclusion that he was observing appellant in the act of selling narcotics is not only based on his expertise, it is supported by common sense. Be that as it may, Stevens’s opinion about the first transaction justified the detention. (People v. Souza, supra, 9 Cal.4th at p. 231.)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: BIGELOW, J. BENDIX, J.
Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.